I bring more overlong Robotech-apocrypha-related Serious Business to the board, by copying one of my old essays to it. Whoo!
When it comes to Zentraedi, I wish I didn’t have to be such a male chauvinist, but unfortunately all the characters who catch my interest or my hatred the most strongly and the most specifically are male. None of the rare female Zentraedi characters have ever been very interesting, even if you factor in the Macross female Zentraedi (I refuse to use the term “Meltrandi” except to describe the DYRL females) who have come after the original series.
But there is one bright spot, one shining star. She’s not all she could have been, but she sure is something: Kazianna Hesh, a character who could have been a total disaster but...wasn’t.
When James Luceno and Brian Daley were doing their own novelized adaptations of Robotech II: The Sentinels, the failed Robotech sequel project, they decided to add some stuff. One of them was Kazianna Hesh, a female Zentraedi who became romantically involved with Breetai, the male Zentraedi commander from the original series. Which really would have sucked, in the normal course of things, coming off like someone’s bad Mary Sue fanfic: mixing your own original characters with established ones, especially on such an intimate level, is usually a very bad idea.
But Kazianna wins because she’s strong and she’s appealing, coming across as intelligent, cheerful, and most importantly, very self-possessed, and all without overshadowing anyone; she’s just fun. Kazianna knows what she wants and goes for it. She is not at all intimidated by Breetai, even though he is now the commander of both genders’ forces as well as being an alpha male type to begin with. That he is her superior lends a teasing, incongruous, role-reversed tone to their initial relationship.
"And, if I may say so, sir, what with all the perils that Fantoma harbors, it is good to be serving in a danger zone under the command of my Lord Breetai once more."
She saluted again, precisely, but still with that odd half smile. Breetai responded, and Kazianna did a careful high-g march back down the little hillock. Breetai watched her go, studying her walk, wondering whether it was something about her armor--a malfunction, perhaps?--that put that nonregulation sway in her gait. (Dark Powers, 64)
Kazianna is flirting cheerfully with him, and Breetai is totally checking her out but not realizing that’s what he’s doing; it makes me grin.
One of the things I like about the secondary source materials is the idea of Breetai as a late bloomer. It’s so different from his usual macho badass image, but also so plausible because the battlefield and the Micronian realms are different areas, and so to be decisive in one area and awkward in another doesn’t really bring down the character’s power and strength. And given that Breetai doesn’t have much direct interaction with human culture in the official material, this view of Breetai is easy enough to create, both because there’s little to contradict it, and because this very refusal to engage might be a slight form of shyness that can easily be explained on the surface by his distant command role.
He takes Kazianna into the city of Zarkopolis, where he explains that the Zentraedi did have a culture before (a very limited one, granted), as miners, that was taken away with the reprogramming into a warrior race; Breetai has a home there, which he takes Kazianna to.
While I have a lot of problems with the Zentraedi-miners idea, the nature of the scene is interesting. Breetai is, for the first time, becoming eloquent and self-conscious, while still feeling like Breetai.
Breetai saw Kazianna looking around, and realized how spartan the furnishings were. In the age since he had lived in that place, he had learned to deceive, but he spoke the simple truth now. "I was the biggest and the strongest of the miners, the first of them," he said. "Only our leader, Dolza, was bigger than I; only he and Exedore were older.
"But-I had few friends-no life, really, except in my work. It seemed to me that they all thought me-"
He stopped, astonished, as she cracked the seal on her helmet and threw it back. Of course, her suit's instruments would have told her there was breathable atmosphere in the tiny quarters-atmosphere he had put there. Only he hadn't seen her check her instruments, and suspected she had done it on what the Humans called "instinct."
"They all thought you what," Kazianna Hesh encouraged him, walking around, glancing at his sketches, opening the other seams in her armor. "Thought you too stoic, thought you too formidable, great Breetai? Treated you so that you felt easier when you were either working or alone?"
She had always been deferential toward him, but now she sounded somehow teasing. She had made her circuit of the tiny living room and stopped now to flick the control that broke the seal on his own helmet. "They didn't see what was there inside?"
She unsealed his helmet and lifted it off, having to rise on her tiptoes to do it even though she was tall. The reinforced floor groaned beneath them. Breetai was too astonished to speak, and the wall was behind his shoulders so he couldn't retreat.
"Couldn't see the real Breetai?" she went on. "Well, my lord, I can." She pulled his head down to her, like some Human, and he found himself being thoroughly kissed. How had she learned about things like this, forbidden to the Zentraedi?
Many of his race had spent time Micronized to Human size. Maybe that had affected her somehow, or she had seen or heard something.
But he had little time to wonder about that. A kiss; the sight of such an act had almost debilitated him once, when Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes performed it on a Zentraedi meeting table. He was awkward at first, self-conscious, but Kazianna didn't appear to mind and in fact didn't seem to know a great deal more about it than he.
When the kiss ended, he would have caught her up in his arms for more, but she held him off and began alternately popping the seals on his suit and her own.
It suddenly came to him what she had in mind. "You...this is proscribed."
"By whom? By Robotech Masters who have fled beyond the stars? By laws that were never really ours?"
Breetai thought about that, and considered his hunger for her, too. The bed was refurbished; he had slept there once or twice on his off-duty hours, waiting for the past to filter into his mind once again.
Breetai put his arms around Kazianna and kissed her carefully, very happy about it but aware that he had a great deal to learn. Then he took her gauntleted hand and led her to his sleeping chamber. Since he had built the house back in the early days of the Tiresian Overlords who were to become the Robotech Masters, no one else had ever been in that room. (Dark Powers 180-183)
Though I love the Robotech novels for saving my interest in the Zentraedi, I never really liked the idea of the Zentraedi being memory-wiped miners, or the idea that they had cities and a more “cultured” life waiting for them on Fantoma. It’s just too easy; good stories work with a minimum of free lunches, and I like the idea of the Zentraedi building their independent civilization from scratch.
But I enjoy some of the ideas that are at work here: That Kazianna challenges Breetai, teases him, rather than submits, but she herself is imperfect, and Breetai’s opening up.
And yeah, Breetai and Kazianna are moving fast, from a kiss to, (ahem) making the earth move, all in one scene but it makes sense in this context: they have been basically ‘raised by wolves’, and are swiftly making up for lost time, not acting their actual ages. That’s how I excuse the rapid formation of romantic relationships and other infatuations among Zentraedi characters in the TV series, and it can apply to the encounter seen here.
Whether these encounters would be lasting is up in the air, and in this case we’ll never know because Breetai dies. But Kazianna does not fade from view. In the final Robotech novel, End of the Circle, she is integrated into the main cast and becomes a viewpoint character. Her background is also explored, though unfortunately it’s all seen through the lens of her relationship to Breetai.
She at one point recalls her earlier encounters with Breetai, ones stretching far back.
In that second, though, all Kazianna Hesh saw was Breetai, striding his personal domain-the domain of battle-like an icon come to life. The most illustrious and successful of Dolza's field commanders and, after the Old One himself, the biggest and strongest of the entire Zentraedi race.
It was heresy to think this, but Kazianna did not care: He was like some higher being, some creature superior to other Zentraedi and even to the Robotech Masters.
But the worship was not mutual; Breetai was still directing his raid and barely gave her a glance. "You! Consolidate your unit and stand by!"
Then he was gone, and she was rushing to obey. Genders were usually strictly separated among the Zentraedi, where neither physical love nor natural birth were known; only the scope of the Tawkhan campaign had thrown them together so.
Thus, Kazianna Hesh could not understand what was happening to her-why did his voice and his look obsess her so? Was it madness?
[...]
At long last came the end of an epoch, when the terrible beauty of Minmei's voice, along with human emotions, worked Armageddon upon the Zentraedi. The glories of their history turned out to be a tissue of lies concocted by the Robotech Masters. Kazianna and the rest were a pitiful handful of survivors.
But for her, something in the human emotions had stirred dormant feelings. For Kazianna, the example of Miriya Parino and her love for Max Sterling pointed the way to an even amore audacious thought. If Zentraedi could love human, why could not Zentraedi love Zentraedi?
In the humble home on Fantoma where Breetai had dwelt at a simple miner an epoch ago, she went to him. And this time she did not permit him to ignore her.
[...]
When death took him from her in combat, she was nearby and saw him sacrifice his life to slay the Regent, end the war. There were fools who looked at the relative size of the combatants--Breetai nearly three times the Regent's height--and marveled that Breetai had not won outright. They understood nothing of the astounding power the Invid monarch had by then, the strength beyond mere size-or of the debilitating effects of Minmei's voice, transmitting her torment, forced on Breetai by the malevolent Edwards.
Kazianna dismissed all fools. What Breetai had done with his dying breath, no one else who ever lived could have done. He died in victorious combat, the highest Zentraedi fulfill¬ment.
Watching him perish in an explosion like the birth of a star, she had wept for the single time in her life. (End of the Circle, 202-203)
I’m getting a little choked up, here. I still wish that this look into Kazianna’s background had more to it than just revealing that she was looking at Breetai from afar a long time before such things were possible, but for a few lines, the book also offers a soldier’s eye view of the Zentraedi transition, recapturing the sweet shock and power of it. And Kazianna’s attraction to Breetai serves as a metaphor or shadowing of those things.
It’s a cliché that Kazianna gives birth to her and Breetai’s child after his death, but to their credit, the narrative doesn’t fall into even more clichés or reduce Kazianna to a “mommy” role. In the few times that it comes up, Kazianna is one of the more credible examples of the “warrior mother”, because she’s earned her badass cred beforehand.
When the authors write passages like this:
Once, darting down into a danger zone in her powered armor like a giant Robotech hornet, Kazianna Hesh would have felt the urge to howl a Zentraedi battle cry.
Foeman, prepare to die! The Quadronos come!
But not here, not today-if "today" meant anything in what the humans were calling newspace. She wasn't free to throw her life away in splendid battle anymore, had obligations and priorities above even military glory-a child to protect.
Thus, she was a hundred times more dangerous than the Kazianna of old. (End of the Circle, 190)
I actually believe in it, instead of being suspicious that the writers are just trying to turn Kazianna into another “Mommy”, or a machine for a precious heir, because we know she can do it, with or without a child.
She is also confused and uncertain about parenting at several points, which serves to make her seem more “human”. Though the circumstances surrounding those particular children would make anyone confused (mystical powers are working through them, turning them into ersatz, but still loving, Midwich Cuckoos), the phrasing suggests that such a feeling is not entirely foreign to her.
"No closer!"
Segundo looked ridiculously small blocking Kazianna's path to the circle of children, but he did not budge an inch when she seemed about to trample him flat.
Instead, she stopped. The humans knew more about young ones than she, and there was an undeniable ring of moral force in the Micronian's voice. (End of the Circle, 222)
Yes, it’s true that most of Kazianna’s thoughts revolve around Breetai, but a strong personality (in more ways than one) emerges. She’s almost like a reversal of Miriya, in that her development doesn’t involve a total destruction of what she thought she wanted...but she also never gets to have that sort of life with her mate.
The comics followed these novels as a source, but we get much less of what makes Kazianna interesting because the comics stopped before they could finish. Though it’s also because they chose to stick her in some stereotypically feminine outfits (popping her out of a mecha in bra and panties! A sleeveless Zentraedi uniform with a miniskirt!). In return we get a visual depiction of Kazianna, which isn’t the best piece of art in the world, but it’ll do, except the moments where she looks kind of vapid.
Somebody along the line should have noticed, though, that a female Zentraedi with short purple hair and presumably pale skin looks way too much like the already-established Azonia. Because of this, I always imagined Kazianna with grey skin, like Rico.
See, I’m always in the mood for inducting “exotic” female Zentraedi into a multiverse where they pretty much all look like Barbie dolls, and since Kazianna was defied as generically pretty, I was stuck with giving her that rare unnatural Zentraedi skin tone. Grey was the way to go, since out of the other available shades, blue and green were too close to Breetai’s skin tone, and purple skin with purple hair is just a bad idea. Sadly, none of this was ever official, and were Kazianna depicted in colour, she would probably not be grey.
In her own way, Kazianna embodies the reason why I would chose to stand by Robotech in this day and age. Because after I took the time to do a little archaeology, I found things that satisfied my interests more than the more legitimate sources did, all the while being surprised that such a thing has happened in this way at all. Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are.
Still, there are things I would change if it were up to me. I would have a non-Breetai-related history developed for Kazianna, and substantial, practical reasons put forth as to why she ascends to command after Breetai’s death. You know she’s good, I know she’s good, but I still can’t shake that “‘cause she was sleeping with the boss” vibe that I get from her path of ascension, even if such a concept might be so foreign to Zentraedi that they’d have no problem with it.
Perhaps it could be that Kazianna helped in gathering together the scattered female Zentraedi forces who did not want to follow Azonia into betrayal of the Micronians, but were unsure of where to go from there, being that the exploration of “culture” was confined to the male fleet. It wouldn’t be all Kazianna’s doing, but it would be enough that she might get elected to form a duumvirate with Breetai, with them having command over their respective genders, being that female Zentraedi might not entirely be okay with taking orders from a male who wasn’t their now-rejected (and also dead) overlord Dolza.
Kazianna would still intend to become Breetai’s mate, and still have that story of their earlier encounter, but that wouldn’t be her motivation for helping the female Zentraedi get organized.
Still, as she stands now, she’s still my girl, the only female Zentraedi I really like. The competition might not be fierce, but that’s no reason to deny it.
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Kazianna really does sound like an interesting character and I can see why you prefer her to the other females. 
